NVIDIA SHIELD Gamepad Mapper released for all-game compatibility

The NVIDIA SHIELD gaming platform just brought on a whole new level of expansion in both the Android and the PC streaming environments. This week with the release of the newest software update from NVIDIA, the device itself gains not only Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, but the addition of three relatively important features: Console Mode, NVIDIA GameStream (formerly known as PC streaming), and SHIELD Gamepad Mapper. The last of these was not revealed until today - a simple built-in ability to map hardware controls to each game uniquely.

The update in SHIELD Gamepad Mapper changes everything for this machine. Now the device is able to take even games that never before had hardware control abilities and changes them into a SHIELD experience. This feature allows users to create profiles for each individual game, save them, and even go so far as to share them with friends.

And if you're not all about creating profiles for yourself, there'll be a community of creators backing you up from the web. At launch, SHIELD Gamepad Mapper works with a variety of default profiles right out of the box.

With Gamepad Mapper you'll be able to download profiles and make use of them with ease. The games listed above work automatically - they're just the first round of "default profiles" that'll be coming in waves each month with regular software updates to SHIELD - and they're miniature super-tiny in size, so no worries on how they'll be filling up your storage.

Stick around as we continue to detail the NVIDIA SHIELD updates today - feel free to bust out the NBA Jam (with built-in SHIELD Gamepad Mapper profile) while you're sticking!